Slashdot Mirror
NBC Still Down On P2P But Plans To Use It Themselves
Cotton Eye Joe writes "Ars Technica has an interview with Rick Cotton, the general counsel for NBC Universal who is best known for saying that piracy is a more serious offence than robbery. Cotton still has some strong opinions on P2P, even though the network will be using it for distribution. 'He's convinced that the pirate problem is costing NBC Universal real revenue and that the scale of the problem is so vast as to discourage investment in the carrots, positive solutions like Hulu. "With all that pirated material available, it creates tremendous disincentives to content owners who need to invest in new content," Cotton says, "and that just hurts consumers over time."'"
piracy is a more serious offense than robbery.
Huh? And this guy makes how much money every year?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Isn't Battlestar Galactica one of the biggest traded shows on P2P? In that case he is probably getting the subject and Mediasentry-like buddies up and going for the new series premiere next month.
Just my first thought and £0.02
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
I love it when spin doctors change the reality of the situation. From an economics standpoint, if there is no supply (e.g. meeting market demands with new product and services - how long have we been asking for newer methods to access and enjoy our entertainment ) then how on earth do you expect demand to come into play?
I have always wanted to buy cool things... I reward convenience with my cash. I reward innovation with my cash. I reward customer service with more cash than if I find a cheaper competing product or service.
If a company didn't respond to market changes in the past, it was called incompetence and the management was fired. These days it seems like the short term desire for quarterly profits blinds people to that.
As I said, you can spin the results any way you want. What makes the money is selling what people want.
(1st sig) If this were a snappy sig, you'd be reading it right now. (2nd sig) I'm a karma whore. >Insert FUD here
is the lack of quality programming and the massive amounts of commercial breaks per 30 minute episode.
The last things on NBC I watched was Hero's and the Knight Rider Movie. Both of them felt very funny like i was watching 4 minutes of show and 4 minutes of commercials. by the time i got through 2 hours of the Knight Rider movie I was pissed off.
Watching NBC is like listening to Wil liam Shat ner speeeeaak. Ev ery thing is drawn out.
sorry I couldn't keep it up my brain kept fixing the errors.
Cut the ads down to less than 15 minutes per 30 minute episode and people might start watching again.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Happens when the network's "content", which turns out to be nothing other than more disappointing dreck, wastes my time, energy and other resources. That's piracy against me.
Trust me, NBC/Universal, none of your nonsense flows through any of the copper in my house.
Same goes for the other traditional "TV networks" in these United States.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Rick Cotton is also the one who claimed that Piracy hurts Corn growers because -- without piracy -- theaters would sell more tickets and thus more popcorn. Don't you see what you're doing all you P2P users?!! You're hurting the poor popcorn farmer. And his family. Won't someone think of the popcorn farmer's children?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
well you should be 100% behind them using p2p for legal means the right? as they are making the slashdot point, that p2p has legal uses. You can't be defensive about legal P2p, and against companies using it at the same time...
I see no problem with them being anti-piracy, pro-copyright, and pro-using p2p for legal means.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
"and that just hurts consumers over time."
I see no mention of consumers in there. I didn't realize that patents and copyrights were to protect consumers. Please, explain this to me.
No, you dumbass... I think you don't understand that P2P was the answer to all the things you did to piss off consumers.
Forcing TiVo to eliminate the commercial skip pissed off consumers.
Using outdated ratings and canceling popular shows pissed off consumers.
Eliminating popular distribution methods (like ITMS) pissed off consumers.
When you alienate enough of them - they fix the problem themselves. P2P is the solution to the problems you created.
TV itself was a gamble when it first came to the public. NBC invested in it. Now they say they won't invest in new mediums because of pirates... give me a damn break. Quit your bitching and listen to your viewers - yes, even the pirates.
It also uses the word "carrots". I don't get it.
I'm seen a ton of the usually P2P and "Piracy" comments... let's look at the other part of what they want to do...
Use a P2P network that they didn't build, didn't buy or contribute to, didn't ask permission to be on, all in order to promote their content and make money.
Who are the real "pirates" here ? NBC it seems. Why doesn't someone just build a filter that prevents NBC from placing content on the network ? Shouldn't NBC put money into BitTorrent, or be accused of stealing themselves ?
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
He is right. Piracy, and thus by definition, P2P has STOLEN so much profit that there is no longer any incentive to create new work. NBC should immediately show us that they truly believe this and cease doing business in a money loosing market. In fact if they do not, the shareholders of NBC should immediately initiate a class action lawsuit, as the NBC executives are clearly harming the financial health of NBC by spending millions of dollars on the creation of new content where there is no incentive to do so.
"Why should customers of a commercial P2P distribution service not only pay for content, but also provide extra bandwidth to help other customers download content?"
So far the answer is that if you're willing to contribute resources to the p2p network you can get access to content that you can't otherwise get, or to get it at a higher quality than you can get without p2p. For an example of the latter, if a video publisher can afford to spend $X per delivery, that revenue number limits what they can afford to spend on delivering the programming. They can allow users to "opt out" and get a low quality download by straight HTTP, where the file is small enough that the cost is acceptable, or "opt in" to p2p and get much higher quality video (which has lower cost due to p2p). So in return for being willing to contribute unused uplink bandwidth, the customer gets access to better content.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
"[The] problem is so vast as to discourage investment in the carrots, positive solutions like Hulu."
And who's fault is that, exactly? Who sat on their heels, clinging desperately to their sinking and outdated business model while new distribution systems were built? Who refused to license content to the new distribution systems? Who, after years of being thrashed by modern technology, finally tried to counter the problem by building DRM encumbered systems that gave the customer far less value than the "pirate" option, while charging much more?
Content owners have, in effect, "trained" the public to be pirates. If a DRM-free system for downloading TV shows and music had existed 10 years ago, most people would probably never have bothered with Napster, and this whole problem would have never existed. If 6 years ago, the content owners had responded to Napster and other P2P technologies with innovation instead of lawsuits, likely software like Napster would have remained a niche product, used by the technically competent (as opposed to, say, my mother). All this senseless talk of "ISP level filtering" only tells us that the content owners have not yet learned the lesson. They are doomed to failure.